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Despite China’s slowing domestic economic growth, global foreign direct investment (FDI) by Chinese companies increased 14 percent in the first half of this year. Here in the United States, many of those investments are fueling new U.S. clean energy projects in solar, wind, battery storage, and other emerging clean-tech sectors. When channeled correctly these investments can be a boon for the U.S. energy economy.

The leading source of water pollution in China is not industry or municipal waste, rather the country’s vast agricultural sector—pesticide and fertilizer runoff from fields and animal waste from industrial-scale farms.

To act, decisionmakers need ideas--and the will to implement them. Effective policy engagement requires providing decisionmakers with accurate data, compelling stories and concise synthesis of applicable knowledge. The panel will look forward to key issues on the horizon including FP2020, adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals, and the global resilience agenda.

Since President Lyndon B. Johnson created the USAID population program in 1965, it has evolved in tandem with the global discourse on population and demography. “The agency’s family planning program is as relevant today as it ever was, and is necessary,” said Jennifer Adams, deputy assistant administrator of the U.S. Agency of International Development’s Bureau for Global Health. The bureau houses the Office of Population and Reproductive Health, which implements U.S. development and relief efforts to expand access to modern contraceptives, fight HIV/AIDS, reduce unsafe abortions, and protect the health of women and children.

When Valerie Hudson evaluates the strength of a nation, whether food security, wealth, peacefulness, or quality of governance, she finds one important thread that underlies it all. “One of the most important factors in the determination of these things is in fact the situation, and security, and status of women,” said Hudson at the Wilson Center on June 24.

The world is more connected than ever before, but also more complex. Big, transnational trends like climate change, urbanization, and migration are changing the calculus of geopolitics, while local-level inequalities persist. “[Change] seems to be spinning around us so fast,” said John Hempelmann, president of the Henry M. Jackson Foundation, which honors the legacy of the late senator from Washington State. How can today’s and tomorrow’s leaders adjust to global trends?

Speakers from the Sahel and US-based experts will engage in solutions-oriented policy dialogues that address demographic trends, reproductive health, food security, and peacebuilding. Additional cross-cutting themes throughout the discussion will include gender, youth, and health.

2015 is a major test for the international system. The Sustainable Development Goals are expected to be adopted in New York in September and expectations for the UN Climate Summit in Paris are higher than perhaps any other time. “It is a critical year,” said Alan Hecht, director for sustainable development for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, “but our challenge is years of sustainable development. How do we take actions today, how do we prepare for the future in such a way that we will achieve a more sustainable outcome?”